Previous PagePage Two of TwoAlan steps into the alcove behind Wendy. Marie tries to keep her tone even, but her eyes remained popped like a deer in the headlights. "He must have wheeled himself over." She turns to Alan. "I didn’t even hear him, just turned around and there he was…" Wendy crosses her arms. "He never wheels himself anywhere." "Are you sure of that?" Alan places a hand on Wendy's shoulder. Wendy grabs the handles of Desmond’s chair and roughly turns him away, brushing off Alan's hand. She wheels him into the waiting elevator and turns around to face the doctor and his receptionist. "So I’ll see you next week?" Alan asks hopefully. "Sure…" 1954 Desmond stands with his back to the pictures on the wall. She sees a hand, her hand, as it lashes out and strikes Desmond in the face. Her fingers jolt from the impact. His glasses fly from his face but he doesn’t flinch or react. He just keeps staring at Wendy as she stands there, chest heaving. Wendy's voice seethes with uncontrolled fury. "Just admit it you bastard! Admit that you’ve been fucking her!" Desmond stands his ground and continues to stare back at Wendy. No bruises mark his face – his features remain calm and unruffled. He breathes steadily, and his eyes gaze into her with a deliberate and surgical precision. The hand she has struck him with quivers at her side. She raises it as though to hit him again. But then a brief instant of doubt causes her to hesitate, to think of just what they were doing, here. When Desmond speaks his voice is even and clear and completely in control. "You know, it really disappoints me to see you acting this way." 1958 Desmond
lies alone in bed. The wheelchair sits akimbo in the corner, as
though left in haste. He lies on his side, eyes open, staring at the
picture on the dresser across the room. It is Desmond and Wendy’s
wedding picture.Slowly
Desmond’s eyes close. Wendy
sits on a stone bench in the backyard, a book in her lap. For now,
she watches the sundial in the centre of the interlocking stone patio
before her. The
sun shifts through clouds in the sky above. The sundial’s shadow
creeps slowly along a track of engraved time. Petals fall from a
lavender tree, covering the patio and sundial in quivering leaves of
bright pink. She thinks briefly of Desmond, alone inside the house,
but… No. Auto Mode. No thinking. Wendy
watches the sundial. The shadows grow strong, then dim. The Dial of
the Sun Shadow crawls to a point on the stone. Wendy
lifts the book from her lap. She opens to a place she had bookmarked
with a playbill. Even
though there is no one to read to, Wendy reads from the book out
loud. Her voice is soft and wavering, seeming to modulate with the
shifting of the clouds and sunlight. "Through
how many eyes do we see the world? Is it only two?" She
takes a breath. The world pulses around her. "By
any objective basis, it would appear that the only truly valid point
of view is one’s own. The only real window onto the universe, from
within the house of one’s own mind. But even if all reality to the
individual is subjective in relation to the material world, there
still remains the possibility of other options…"